Thanks Chris. You've done a good job of settling the restless natives. I don't envy your job (ok, yes I do. I very much envy you're job. I wanna work at/for Adagio!!!! Any plans on expanding into utah?) Anywho. We all love ya. Some a little too much (haven't you recived a proposal or two?).
I'm eagerly awaiting your new discripitons!

Well now, Chris is looking uber sophisticated these days with his new URL pic... had to mention. No more weezer days for him!
I can see Sebastian's point, i end up translating tea names to try and figure out what they're talking about... it's a little on the gimmiky side. Then again, when they use the "pin yin" I have to translate that to mandarin. Lung Ching is LongJing- which is definitely the version that should be used since it's from Hangzhou (or should be at least!!) and noone there speaks cantonese. And I do see where they're going with the musical references, they're selling to an American audience- not famous for our sophistication. Adagio seems to do things really differently than other tea companies in that they sell to a more mainstream audience as opposed to a niche like sevencups or generation tea. I do think there's a call for that. Not everyone knows what the hell you're talking about when you say the tea is spring tea with a kuwei. I still can't get my own mom weaned off of cheap jasmine tea. Nice call on the Wuyi Longjing Sebastian!! Those laowai know a thing or two after all

I was at a crossroads in life... I was finally forced to make the decision between rock-stardom and the pastoral life of a tea maestro. In short, I took the road less traveled. (Sorry, fans of my gansta Hip-Hop group "The Wu Yi Clan." We had a good run while it lasted, fellas.)

Steeped,

Chris
Adagio Maestro

PS.... Incidentally, the picture is actually a headshot for my new tea book, a guide to tea, scheduled to hit bookshelves in August.

I think your descriptions should have more structure. Sometimes a discription talks about the flavor, and other times it talks about its history, or the processing method it undergoes. I would put every topic into its own tab to have more direct information. For example, the earl grey bravo description doesnt really do justice to the flavor earl grey has, although u do learn a fun little story. When i shop for tea the description of the flavor is very important, and it would be nice to get a brief description here instead of having to do my homework elsewhere online where I have to read volumes to get the information i want.

Woops, I just posted about the oolong names in the Recommendations forum!

Anyway I agree in general. I kinda dig the naming conventions of the site save for the numerical designations like "oolong 18". However, it would be helpful to many of us to discern the kind of tea based on names that we are familiar with.

Re: Lung Ching/Long Jing: They are both roman transliterations (luoma pinyin) of Mandarin Chinese, the first being Wade-Giles and second being Hanyu Pinyin. The former is more commonly seen in academic works and is still seen, though Hanyu Pinyin is the primary system of Mainland China and is becoming implemented more and more in Taiwan too.

Further, many have English names that are back-translatable to Chinese or are in widespread use (for instance Oriental Beauty translates to dongfang meiren and is a known nickname for Bai Hao Oolong).

I suppose it just takes time and energy to go through the hassle for the few of us who really care. One tea at a time I suppose!

Interestingly, and I'm not sure if anyone else has noticed this, but the "real names" of the teas seem to be identified in the URLs. For example, Jasmine #12 is identified in the URL as "http://www.adagio.com/oolong/dragon_pearl.html", or "Dragon Pearls". This seems to be consistent with all of the other blends as well. However the true names of the teas aren't actually in the descriptions consistently. But, hey... it's quick to find out.

Okay, maybe not. On some others, the reverse is true: the real name is in the description and the fabricated name is in the URL. Very interesting. So, to reiterate, when all *else* fails, take a look at the URL. :-p